The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1223 - Trans Triple Harvard Grad Runs Scared From Our Debate

00:00:00.000 A San Francisco Whole Foods store has closed after having been open for just one year.

00:00:05.400 The store closed because of high crime and dangerous conditions for employees.

00:00:10.680 Junkies are reportedly regularly loitering and shooting up around the store.

00:00:15.260 It is not a pleasant shopping experience. So why are the bums and the criminals loitering 1.00

00:00:21.260 around the store? Why is crime so high? It's because San Francisco's elected officials have

00:00:26.720 stopped enforcing the law. Arrests have fallen dramatically in recent years. The mayor has

00:00:32.300 called to defund the police. It's a cautionary tale, not just for major cities, but for every

00:00:38.620 locale that liberalism has infected. It's an answer to the question that liberals always bring up

00:00:45.660 when they run out of arguments. The question is, how does it affect you? What do you mean people

00:00:52.340 shouldn't be able to do drugs? How does it affect you? What do you mean men shouldn't strap on 0.80

00:00:58.760 stilettos and saunter into the ladies' room? How does it affect you? It affects me and you and all 0.98

00:01:06.480 of us because we live in society. And you can't live comfortably in a chaotic society. If you had

00:01:15.500 the choice of being the poorest man in a prosperous society or the richest man in a collapsing society,

00:01:21.460 you would choose the prosperous society every time. No man is an island entire of itself. We are social

00:01:30.500 beings. San Francisco is one of the richest places in America, but its wealthy residents can't have

00:01:38.760 Whole Foods, can't have a supermarket. They can't walk down the street without fear of being murdered

00:01:43.920 like the poor Cash App founder in San Francisco last week. How does social collapse affect us? It affects

00:01:50.800 our whole way of life. What right do we have to impose a better way of life, our preferred way of

00:01:58.020 life on the druggies and the bums and the criminals? We have the right of self-government.

00:02:02.920 And we'd better start reasserting that right before the whole country turns into one gigantic San 1.00

00:02:08.320 Francisco. I'm Michael Knowles. It's the Michael Knowles Show.

00:02:17.800 Welcome back to the show. This episode is brought to you by one of my absolute favorite companies on

00:02:23.220 earth, Good Ranchers. Free bacon, great meat, a secure price, and an extra 20 bucks off with my code

00:02:31.020 Knowles. Head to GoodRanchers.com. Use my code Knowles for $20 off your order. We've got some real

00:02:40.200 updates coming into the latest attacks on democracy, our sacred democracy. Here in my state of Tennessee,

00:02:50.240 the Tennessee Three who led a riot at the Capitol. But this was a good riot. It was a good riot at the

00:02:57.600 Capitol in Tennessee. It was a bad riot in Washington, D.C. We'll get into that. But there's some new

00:03:03.980 footage of one of these Tennessee Three that has appeared that is, it makes you weep for our

00:03:10.740 democracy. We'll get to that in just a little bit. First, though, first, though, speaking of violence,

00:03:18.380 Karine Jean-Pierre over at the White House is pushing a new assault weapons ban. The Libs

00:03:26.320 are trying to take your AR-15s, one of the most popular guns in America. They're trying to take

00:03:32.340 those guns, and they are not merely fear-mongering over the guns. They are now outright lying about

00:03:40.040 them. We need Congress to act. And if you think about assault weapons ban, we know when we saw when

00:03:48.480 the president was involved in 1994 to get that done, we saw gun violence go down. And when it sunset

00:03:55.520 10 years later, it went back up. So we know what could work. And that's why you continue to hear

00:04:00.860 the president calling on Congress to take action. That just isn't true. On this show, I always try

00:04:09.540 to give the Libs the benefit of the doubt. I try to see the point that maybe they're trying to make

00:04:15.120 that's obscured by their ideology. I try to be as charitable in my view as I possibly can be.

00:04:19.840 But what she said just isn't true. There's no way for me to complicate this or to find some nuance.

00:04:28.440 She's just wrong. I have to give a hat to Dana Lash for finding that clip. And she debunked it very, 1.00

00:04:35.800 very well. A number of conservatives are doing that right now. It isn't true that the DOJ in July of 2004

00:04:43.280 observed that the assault weapons ban did not do that. The DOJ concluded that it could not credit

00:04:50.040 the ban with any drop in gun violence. JAMA, this is the Journal of the American Medical Association,

00:04:58.140 we've got an article here from 2017, observed that specific laws directed at firearm trafficking,

00:05:05.920 improving child safety, or the banning of military-style assault weapons were not associated

00:05:12.060 with changes in firearm homicide rates. I've got another paper here. This is from just January of

00:05:18.220 this year from the Rand Corporation, concludes pretty much the very same thing. It's just not

00:05:23.960 true. The White House is just lying. They have no arguments on their side. And so they're just going

00:05:28.980 to double down on a lie. And it is the definition of madness to do the very same thing over and over

00:05:36.180 again and expect different results. It's just not true. If they had good arguments, they would make

00:05:42.560 them. They don't, so they lie to you. We should not give this any quarter, any Republican who votes for

00:05:47.940 the so-called assault weapons ban is just a complete tool, a total squish. There's no reasoning with that

00:05:56.060 kind of a Republican because there's no reason in this debate. Speaking of debates, I mentioned yesterday

00:06:02.780 on the show how excited I am at the prospect of this debate that I'm having at the University of

00:06:09.840 Pittsburgh scheduled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute with Professor Donald McCloskey, who now

00:06:16.200 goes by Deirdre. He identifies as transgender. He's a distinguished professor. We were to debate

00:06:21.660 transgenderism and womanhood and who decides on this. And this has been scheduled for a long time,

00:06:27.880 all sorts of petitions and political calls to shut down the debate. The professor had previously

00:06:32.700 said that he hates me. He specifically called me a fascist and all sorts of mean names,

00:06:37.000 but said that we have to debate. You shouldn't run away from debates.

00:06:41.860 He pulled out of the debate. He pulled out of the debate. It was obviously keeping him up at night.

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00:08:04.540 I was contacted by the media yesterday, shortly after my show, asking me for comment on Professor

00:08:11.580 McCloskey's pulling out of this debate with me at the University of Pittsburgh.

00:08:17.100 So then I looked at the articles to see what Professor McCloskey was saying here. And according

00:08:25.200 to this article from the City Paper, quote, since discovering Knowles to be utterly uninterested in

00:08:31.960 finding the truth and instead, quote, interested in stirring up hatred and violence toward people

00:08:38.140 who do not fit his extremely conservative Catholic beliefs, she, meaning he, Donald McCloskey,

00:08:44.260 has dropped out of the event. McCloskey says he, quote, is very willing to debate on the issue,

00:08:50.740 just not with Knowles. Then they say, I made headlines for calling for the eradication of

00:08:55.260 transgenderism, the whole ideology from public life at CPAC. So this is very curious that Professor

00:09:03.160 McCloskey would drop out now because it is true. Both Professor McCloskey and I were invited by ISI

00:09:09.040 to debate before my CPAC speech and before the media lied about what I said and the White House

00:09:13.540 lied about what I said. But then after the speech, Professor McCloskey reiterated his desire to debate

00:09:22.780 the issue. And he called me all sorts of mean names. He called me a fascist. He called me an anti-Jesus

00:09:30.200 Catholic. He identifies not just as a woman but as Episcopalian. So he, I guess there was an anti-Catholic

00:09:38.120 dig. But he said, regardless, we need to debate these ideas, not run away from them, not hide them

00:09:43.940 or suppress them. Okay. Then we had a pre-debate call. So this is a call with the organizers and me

00:09:54.420 and Professor McCloskey. And we discussed what we'd like to talk about during the debate. And he started

00:10:01.960 off quite rude and impolite on the call. But by the end, he had sort of warmed up a little bit.

00:10:06.980 And I don't know. I guess he just didn't know very much about me. And I think he expected me to be

00:10:12.840 just some bomb-throwing, you know, provocateur. And so when I said on the call that, no, my objection

00:10:22.640 is just that I don't think that transgender people is a real ontological category. I think there are

00:10:28.060 people who are confused about their sex, but that's not a real distinct category of being. And when I

00:10:32.660 said that my issue here is an epistemological disagreement and an anthropological disagreement,

00:10:40.720 and here's why I think transgenderism is false. And furthermore, here's why I think that the state 0.99

00:10:44.980 has a role in regulating the basic definitions of these things. Professor McCloskey seemed surprised by

00:10:50.620 that. He started out the phone call by insinuating that I'm poorly educated and don't have any idea

00:10:58.740 what I'm talking about. But by the end of the call, he didn't really have that posture anymore.

00:11:05.340 And at one point, actually, when he was surprised that I said that I do support the state having a

00:11:11.300 role in regulating these things, he said, oh, I guess you're a consistent conservative. You know,

00:11:16.100 if I were not a conservative, if I were a libertarian or something like that,

00:11:19.360 then he could have caught me in a bit of hypocrisy. But no, I was just explaining my

00:11:23.040 view. It's the basic conservative view. It's the basic view that everybody held on this issue

00:11:27.380 until about eight years ago. It's the view that even liberal Democrats held until about eight years

00:11:32.660 ago. It's based on an understanding of human nature that dates back at least 2,300 years and

00:11:38.360 based on a traditional epistemology that served our civilization very, very well.

00:11:43.700 And anyway, I don't mean any of that to try to persuade Professor McCloskey to come into the

00:11:52.120 debate. I just mentioned that to point out that his excuse as to why he's pulling out

00:11:56.400 is not honest. Professor McCloskey knew my views on this subject. He's known them for well over a month

00:12:05.080 at least. And then we even had a call about it a couple of weeks ago. After the call, he reiterated

00:12:11.860 his desire to have the debate. Nothing has changed since then. And so I suspect all that's changed is

00:12:18.680 he knows that he can't win the debate. That's not a knock on his intelligence. It's not a knock on his

00:12:26.000 education. But he's just wrong. He's defending an indefensible position. And so I think he could have

00:12:36.520 seemed to win the debate if I were just a bomb thrower and I were just a provocateur and calling

00:12:42.440 people all sorts of names the way that he was calling me names. Maybe then he could have appeared

00:12:46.840 like the adult in the room. But because that's not my style and because he, after that phone call,

00:12:52.080 had been a little bit more familiar with my style, I think he realized there was just no

00:12:57.340 win for him. And so he contradicted his previous view that we have to debate these things in public

00:13:02.940 and we need to hash these things out in the free marketplace of ideas. And now he's just run away

00:13:08.120 from the debate. I've got a speech today in East Tennessee State University over in Johnson City.

00:13:14.220 And then I've got a speech tomorrow at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. So if you're

00:13:20.220 around, head on over there. You can reserve tickets online. We'll see out there. It's not that I have a

00:13:25.540 lack of speaking opportunities over the next few weeks. But I was looking forward to this debate and

00:13:31.060 hashing out this issue that everybody seems so focused on. That's unfortunate because I know

00:13:35.080 that some people in this audience had made plans to attend to the debate. I know that there were

00:13:40.780 obviously going to be a lot of protests and there were always hecklers and all sorts of miscreants,

00:13:45.420 but it doesn't come from our side. It's not the conservatives who do that. It's always the people

00:13:49.060 on Professor McCloskey's side of the debate who disrupt these events. So we were prepared for that

00:13:54.500 and it's unfortunate. So we're looking for a replacement. I intend to do some kind of event

00:13:59.580 at Pitt. We're working on seeing if anyone else will come in, but I think it's very telling.

00:14:06.420 As I've said from the beginning of this whole debate prospect, I've said, if I'm going to have

00:14:11.820 this debate, I want it to be with a really serious person. I want it to be with the person who can make

00:14:15.960 the strongest argument for transgenderism that there is. I don't want some two-bit hustler from 1.00

00:14:22.360 YouTube or something. I want a distinguished scholar. And it's very telling that a distinguished

00:14:30.300 professor with multiple degrees from Harvard, three of them, and half a dozen honorary doctorates,

00:14:36.160 and two dozen academic publications, even he does not feel that he can debate the issue of

00:14:43.640 transgenderism. And he would rather concede the debate before it begins than lose in front of

00:14:51.220 the C-SPAN cameras, because also C-SPAN was going to air this debate. So not surprising. And I'm happy

00:14:59.120 to take a win by default. Happy to take this technical victory. But it's too bad that we couldn't have the

00:15:06.780 debate in public. It's too bad that he did not have the courage of his convictions, convictions both about

00:15:11.600 transgenderism, and about the role of debate in society. It proves an old adage, which is that

00:15:19.520 you can always tell a Harvard man, but you can't tell him much. Speaking of gender, sometimes you

00:15:27.920 will hear the libs say that they are not, in fact, transing the kids. Out of one side of the mouth,

00:15:34.880 they say, it's very important that we trans the kids. This is gender-affirming health care. We have to

00:15:38.380 give it to everybody. Even the White House says this. But then out of the other side of your mouth,

00:15:42.160 when a conservative criticizes this idea, they'll say, no, we're not doing that. This is a right-wing

00:15:47.540 conspiracy theory. We're not transing the kids. And you say, well, you're putting them in gender-affirming 0.98

00:15:52.660 therapy. Well, yes, that's true. And you're putting them on puberty blockers. You say, yes, that's true.

00:15:58.960 You're putting them on cross-sex hormones sometimes. Yes, that's true. 0.98

00:16:01.740 So how are you not transing the kids? And what they will say is, well, we're not performing the

00:16:07.340 surgeries on them. We're not chopping off their body parts. We wait until 18 to do that. But that's

00:16:13.040 not true. North Carolina Surgery Clinic has just been caught performing the gender surgery on young 1.00

00:16:21.440 girls as young as 14. The Cosmetic Concierge, which is a plastic surgery clinic in Charlotte,

00:16:27.240 performed elective double mastectomies on these young teenage girls, including at the very least

00:16:33.760 one 14-year-old. This, according to reports from Redux. They've got images of this. It's not even

00:16:40.120 just records. They've got images showing the results of top surgery procedures, which is where

00:16:45.340 these quacks chop off the breasts, healthy breasts of young girls who are having a little bit of body 1.00

00:16:51.260 discomfort as they go through puberty, like every single teenage girl ever in human history. 0.67

00:16:56.320 Well, what they decide to do is chop off their healthy body parts. The photos include lots of

00:17:02.160 other girls too, though. 16-year-olds, 15-year-olds, and 14-year-olds. This is happening. Don't let them 0.92

00:17:08.640 tell you that this isn't happening. It is. Don't let them tell you that they're not defunding the

00:17:15.340 police. They are. Don't let them tell you that they're not putting porn in schools, elementary schools.

00:17:20.040 They are. We've got the pictures. We've got the receipts. It is happening. And their only argument

00:17:26.280 against it now is just to lie. They're just lying. There's no engaging in a good faith dialogue and

00:17:35.060 finding the nuance here. They're just, they're doing very bad things and they're trying to cover

00:17:39.740 it up. And the only way to deal with that is to outlaw it and then bring down the weight of

00:17:45.000 government and the force and the state and the justice system to punish the people who do these

00:17:49.440 kinds of evil, evil acts. Speaking of medical malpractice and our judicial system, huge win 0.92

00:17:57.880 from the courts. Major, major win for pro-life. This is the biggest win for pro-life since the

00:18:03.940 overruling of Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs decision. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kashmarek, I'm almost

00:18:10.200 certainly mispronouncing that name, suspended the FDA's longtime approval of the abortion drug

00:18:18.540 mifepristone. The government has one week to appeal this decision, but the federal judge

00:18:24.220 has suspended the FDA approval of mifepristone, which was granted more than 20 years ago.

00:18:31.200 And this drug is used in tandem with another drug, misoprostol, to kill babies up until about 10

00:18:40.020 weeks old. Why does this matter? Well, we think about abortion as the woman goes into the abortion 0.96

00:18:47.600 mill and the quacks and the witches and the satanic doctors go in and kill the babies. That's what we 0.99

00:18:52.900 picture. But more than half of U.S. abortions are not surgical. They're medical. They're done by 0.86

00:19:02.720 taking pills. And what this judge has done is to suspend the approval of that pill. Why is he doing

00:19:12.000 it? It says, quote, the government did not adequately assess the drug safety and should not have made it

00:19:17.100 accessible via telehealth during the pandemic. Obviously true. And what it means is, if this

00:19:22.900 stay on the drug goes into effect, the drug would no longer be available anywhere in the U.S.

00:19:28.340 There are going to be squished Republicans who say, oh, don't do this. Oh, don't. Abortion. It's 0.91

00:19:33.580 not a good issue for us. It's a losing issue. Can't we just, let's just not talk about it, please.

00:19:38.780 These are the same people who've been saying the same thing for decades and decades.

00:19:44.480 The only two issues on which conservatives have won over the last 50 years have been guns

00:19:50.500 and pro-life. That's it. We've lost everything else. Sometimes we cut taxes a little bit and

00:19:55.460 the taxes go back up. But we've lost on everything. Why? Because those are the only issues where we

00:20:01.300 speak in clear moral terms. The left always speaks in clear immoral terms. And on guns,

00:20:09.280 on the right to protect yourself, and on pro-life, conservatives speak in clear moral terms.

00:20:13.360 And that persuades people. And that is where we win. Don't go squishy now. We're talking about more

00:20:19.080 than half the abortions in the United States are performed using drugs like this. Save half those

00:20:25.840 babies. Let's go. This is great. Push forward on this. It will go up to the Supreme Court. I want to

00:20:31.760 hear every conservative in the country embracing this, endorsing this, persuading their fellow

00:20:36.940 citizens that this is a good thing. This is the right thing to do. The judge has done his part.

00:20:42.320 Let's go. All the conservative electeds, all the media heads, all these people. I want to hear it.

00:20:46.860 There has been, according to the liberal media, a muted response from Republicans who don't want

00:20:52.220 this to swing back on them. I don't want a muted response. I don't want squishes. I don't want 1.00

00:20:56.380 cowards. Speak up for life. If you're not going to defend life, you're not going to defend anything

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00:22:13.160 When was the last time you prayed? Maybe a better question to ask is,

00:22:16.880 when was the last time you thought about the meaning of prayer? Many people see prayer as a way of

00:22:22.200 petitioning God for something. But as with all things concerning God, there is more to it than that.

00:22:28.540 That's the way Ben Shapiro describes it in the latest episode of Exodus,

00:22:31.640 a marvelous new series from Jordan Peterson.

00:22:34.120 The idea of prayer that you're talking about is obviously a lot more meaningful because it's

00:22:38.680 really not about changing God's mind. It's about changing who you are, and thus God naturally

00:22:42.340 responds to you differently because you're not the person that you were before you prayed.

00:22:45.840 The verb to pray in Hebrew is actually in the reflexive tense, right? Lahit palel,

00:22:50.800 which is supposed to, the idea is that it's supposed to be something that acts on you. The prayer is

00:22:54.280 supposed to act on you. It's not supposed to be something where you're attempting to

00:22:57.220 pry an answer out of God.

00:22:59.320 Ben and Jordan are joined by a group of esteemed scholars, theologians, and artists for an in-depth

00:23:03.760 discussion on a very, very important book of the Bible. It is every bit as illuminating as you would

00:23:10.420 hope. New episodes are coming online every week exclusively for Daily Wire Plus members. Join now

00:23:14.580 at dailywire.com slash subscribe to watch Exodus. Also, this past weekend, yes or no, the greatest game

00:23:20.220 on the internet. Came back with a new episode. I sat down with my dear friend, Brett Cooper,

00:23:26.520 and we bridged that generational divide on yes or no. You can have the game yourself. Right now,

00:23:30.840 go to dailywire.com slash shop. We've shipped out thousands of these. It is going to sell out again,

00:23:36.200 but they are shipping. Don't wait. Dailywire.com slash shop.

00:23:40.060 Now, speaking of things going on in Tennessee right now, you know about the riot. I'm sorry,

00:23:52.760 the peaceful, wonderful protest. It's a peaceful, wonderful protest when it's the Democrats

00:23:59.660 leading people in to interrupt legislative procedures, and it's a terrible insurrection,

00:24:06.560 the worst thing ever, when conservative grannies go and take pictures in the Capitol Rotunda. 0.97

00:24:11.640 That's what happens. So now we're trying to figure out who these people are.

00:24:19.880 There were three reps who pushed this nonsense, one of whom is a woman by the name of Gloria Johnson. 0.99

00:24:29.240 Gloria Johnson is one of the three. She's the only one who managed to survive the expulsion vote.

00:24:34.200 She survived it by one vote. The other two got booted out of the state house, 1.00

00:24:38.080 but she survived it by one vote because she was slightly less egregious in her behavior on that day. 1.00

00:24:43.440 So these are the kind of people who are running the show in New York. Gloria Johnson just recently

00:24:49.740 made the claim that the conservatives in Tennessee are trying to bring back lynching.

00:24:54.780 It was just a few weeks ago that one of my colleagues in our criminal justice committee,

00:24:59.280 um, we were, we had a bill, they have a bill to bring back the firing squad and the electric chair.

00:25:06.160 And one of my colleagues said, I think we should bring back hanging by a tree.

00:25:12.100 Um, he literally suggested lynching. 0.76

00:25:16.140 It's happening in Tennessee, by the way, I said it was New York because of this woman's crazy ideas, 1.00

00:25:20.440 but no, that's what a Tennessee lawmaker is saying. That's not what lynching is.

00:25:28.940 Lynching is extrajudicial killing by a group of people.

00:25:36.660 Lynching does not always involve hanging. Lynch mobs can lynch people all sorts of different ways.

00:25:42.600 And hanging does not always mean lynching. In fact, most of the time, hanging has not meant lynching.

00:25:52.600 But most of the time, hanging has just been the punishment for a crime meted out by the courts.

00:25:57.760 If a criminal is tried and convicted and then hanged, you wouldn't call that a lynching. That

00:26:04.200 is just the ordinary administration of justice. This woman doesn't know a basic fact about the 1.00

00:26:09.320 justice system. And it makes me wonder, how long can we govern ourselves with ignorance this pervasive?

00:26:19.920 How long can we continue this republic of ours when people, and especially our leaders,

00:26:29.400 don't know a thing about anything? They don't know. I'm not saying that they have kind of eccentric

00:26:34.520 ideas or that we would disagree on this. I mean, they just don't know basic facts about anything.

00:26:39.320 They don't know what a man is. They don't know what a woman is. How long can we endure? 0.53

00:26:44.000 Our constitution is great. It's a really nice piece of paper with really nice fancy handwriting on it.

00:26:48.740 But it doesn't mean anything if there are not people to run the government properly.

00:26:55.660 And we have such blithe ignorance in this country, especially among the leadership class.

00:27:01.100 I don't know how much longer we can go on like this. Now, the other person who helped lead the

00:27:06.720 Tennessee riot, a guy named Justin Pearson. Justin Pearson is a preacher, I guess, in addition to

00:27:15.380 being a former politician, a guy who used to have a seat in the state house, but now got booted out.

00:27:22.000 Here is the way that Pearson preaches.

00:27:23.860 Would you mind going ahead and praying with me now, Mother God, Creator God, loving God, Holy God,

00:27:30.560 take this your servant made from dust and connected with the raw materials of stardust to speak in this

00:27:35.920 moment, to say something that brings forward the word you placed into my heart. I accept my

00:27:40.540 unworthiness for such a task as bold as this, and I seek your guidance as you use me and speak through

00:27:46.860 me. To the ancestor preachers who made sermons from hymns, moans, and groans, and spirituals from

00:27:53.520 the bondage of slavery, speak now through this your descendant. To the black women locked out, 0.97

00:27:59.260 being abused, tormented, raped, eradicated, and yet born a new and distant future in this country, 0.98

00:28:05.700 and to a young colored boy named me, I name you now my great-grandmother Anna Ruth, my great-grandmother

00:28:11.380 Flossie, my great-grandmother Everline, my great-grandmother Lavinia. Yeah, he goes on and on

00:28:16.260 and on. Slam poetry is the death of art. It would seem to be the death of religious worship,

00:28:26.880 and it's now also the death of politics. He opens up, he says, Mother God, these people who insist

00:28:33.360 that we honor their pronouns, their preferred pronouns, they won't honor God's preferred pronouns. 0.89

00:28:38.740 They never seem to do that. Why does it matter? Why does it matter what this guy's religious views

00:28:42.880 are? Or irreligious views, I guess, in this case? Because, as John Adams told us, the Constitution

00:28:50.700 is built for a moral and religious people. And when he's talking about religion, he's talking about

00:28:55.200 Christianity. Not Mother God, ancestor worship, or whatever this guy's talking about, but actual

00:29:00.660 Christianity. Not the, what is this place called? The Memphis Unitarian Universalist meeting house,

00:29:07.260 but Christianity. John Adams spelled that out. He said, the beliefs that animate America are

00:29:13.720 Christian beliefs. The morality that animates America, it's Christian morality. John Jay said

00:29:17.880 this. The Founding Fathers said this resoundingly. Why is a politician a preacher? I'm not on him

00:29:26.340 because he's a preacher. Of course, government is in the religion business. How and who and what we

00:29:34.720 worship more than anything else forms who we are. If we worship God, we're going to have a godlier,

00:29:43.180 goodlier, better society. If we worship money, we're going to have a materialistic society. If we

00:29:50.300 worship weird sex stuff, we're going to have a lust-convulsed society. If we worship ourselves, 0.90

00:29:56.380 we're in a very selfish society. In that sermon, he goes on, he talks about how important it is

00:30:01.560 to trans everybody. They won't have to worry about folks talking about advocating for people to get

00:30:07.180 access to healthcare who are transgender children. Won't have to worry about the need to end lynching

00:30:14.700 as capital punishment. There it is too. Oh man, the first time all I caught was the need to trans 1.00

00:30:22.400 people. And by the way, children, he says. Well, listen, we need to. I'm praying to the mother

00:30:27.660 goddess of the spirit of my ancestors. And that is why we need to chop off the healthy genitals of 1.00

00:30:33.240 the little children. And that is why we need to pump them full of cross-sex hormones and sterilize 1.00

00:30:37.860 the children because of my religious views. And that is why we need to stop lynching as capital 0.66

00:30:44.600 punishment. Lynching cannot be capital punishment by definition. Capital punishment is a part of the

00:30:55.480 judicial system. If a person has a fair trial, a real trial, and is convicted by the civil authority,

00:31:05.740 by the judicial system, and is then killed, that cannot be lynching. By definition, these are the

00:31:13.220 people who are running our states. And this is going to be increasingly the case. This is a young man.

00:31:21.060 He's in his mid to late 20s. It's not his fault that he was poorly educated. It's not his fault that

00:31:28.660 he was raised in some bizarro pseudo-religious upbringing. It's not his fault that this was how

00:31:36.680 he was formed. It's not his fault, but it is our problem. Our leaders are just so profoundly ignorant.

00:31:46.340 They have no idea. And when all of our leaders have no idea, our country cannot fly. The Constitution 1.00

00:31:58.140 was built for a moral and religious people. I'll add one little extra to that. It was built for people

00:32:03.800 who knew the most basic facts of reality. When you want to see what's going on in reality, sometimes we

00:32:12.000 engage with fiction. One great new work you ought to check out. Nefarious. Listen, you know I'm a tough

00:32:18.180 critic. Pretty clear when I don't like something. I don't keep my views usually to myself. There's a

00:32:24.500 new movie opening on April 14th called Nefarious that looks and sounds like another completely

00:32:30.240 forgettable horror film. But here's why it's different. It's not a horror film. It's a realistic

00:32:35.560 psychological thriller that becomes a supernatural thriller. It's about a serial killer about to be

00:32:40.820 executed who claims he's a demon. The psychiatrist is called in to see if the man's going crazy

00:32:45.620 or is faking insanity to get off the hook. The psychiatrist is your standard Ivy League guy,

00:32:50.620 doesn't believe in demons and God, anything like that. But he doesn't quite realize what he's up

00:32:56.560 against. This film is surprising and thought-provoking, something you definitely need to see.

00:33:00.760 Nefarious opens nationwide starting April 14th. Go to whoisnefarious.com. Buy your tickets today.

00:33:06.700 That is whoisnefarious.com for tickets. Head on over there right now. You will enjoy it,

00:33:14.440 especially this basically nothing good coming out of Hollywood. So head on over to whoisnefarious.com.

00:33:20.880 My favorite comment yesterday is from Scoot. Scoot, who says, I can't wait for this debate.

00:33:26.660 It's going to be a classic. Thanks, Knowles. Bad news for you, Scoot.

00:33:29.960 Sorry, man. I don't, I was looking forward to it too. I thought it would have been an interesting

00:33:37.020 debate, but I, all I can do is accept a debate invitation. But if my debate opponent gets cold

00:33:46.300 feet at the very end, what can I do? Debate's over before it began. I guess I won.

00:33:52.900 But I still wish we could have had the debate. C'est la vie. C'est la vie.

00:34:03.640 Now, speaking of our rulers, 2024 is around the corner. And there's a really interesting poll that

00:34:13.120 just came out of Florida. Ron DeSantis has just edged out Donald Trump in Florida. Now,

00:34:19.980 this might be expected because Ron DeSantis is the governor of Florida. So he's active right now,

00:34:25.420 especially in that state. People are very aware of him there. Okay. The reason this matters is

00:34:31.780 because Florida is the one state where you could say that Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump have pretty

00:34:38.640 much the same degree of name recognition. People whose nose is in politics all the time frequently

00:34:45.720 forget that a lot of people don't pay attention to this stuff so frequently. And so Ron DeSantis

00:34:49.800 doesn't have anywhere near the name recognition that Donald Trump has nationwide. But in Florida,

00:34:53.240 they do. And head to head in Florida, DeSantis, at least according to this poll from Mason Dixon

00:34:57.720 polling, is slightly edging out Trump in Florida. Great news for DeSantis. However, I still think

00:35:06.400 Trump has the advantage here. I still think this is Trump's race to lose. Ron DeSantis has done a great

00:35:13.200 job building up his support among Floridians. It's taken him a while to do that. And he's got

00:35:18.620 really tangible results for Florida residents to point to. Is he going to be able to do that

00:35:23.720 nationwide? It's hard to see how Trump has had such a head start. Trump is going to get so much

00:35:29.740 free publicity from the media. And the fact that the libs hate Trump more than they hate DeSantis is

00:35:34.840 going to help Trump in the primary. Unless they throw this guy in prison and prevent him from

00:35:40.120 campaigning, it's hard to see how DeSantis ultimately pulls it off. But this is good news for him. This

00:35:46.440 is a good start to his campaign. It shows that he's at least got a shot to do it. The best argument

00:35:56.160 against Trump in 2024 is that the powers that be are just not going to let him win again.

00:36:04.540 And that's not a fair knock on his campaign. And it's not right. And it's not just. But

00:36:10.620 especially if you think that there were shenanigans in the 2020 election,

00:36:14.840 what's to say there's not going to be shenanigans this time? How are you going to prevent that?

00:36:19.900 If you think that there are interests that can strongly influence a campaign and an election,

00:36:26.040 how's Trump going to prevent that this time? Speaking of the deep state,

00:36:31.500 the FBI cultivated sources in Catholic parishes. The FBI was spying on Catholics simply for going to

00:36:42.600 mass as part of a counterterrorism campaign. We know this now because of the man, Jim Jordan,

00:36:50.640 who as the head of the Judiciary Committee of the House, just wrote to the director of the FBI,

00:36:57.520 Christopher Wray, and observes that based on the limited information produced by the FBI to the

00:37:02.740 committee, we now know that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to produce its analysis

00:37:07.580 and that the FBI proposed that its agents engage in outreach to Catholic parishes to develop sources

00:37:12.740 among the clergy and church leadership to inform on Americans practicing their faith. So they're trying

00:37:17.580 to go and flip the priests on the parishioners. Do you realize how messed up this is? Especially

00:37:27.900 considering that Christianity is an incarnational faith, Catholicism in particular, takes that

00:37:33.920 sacramental incarnational aspect very, very seriously. Catholics engage in sacramental confession.

00:37:39.400 We go into the confessional, we confess our sins to a priest. We tell the priest all the worst

00:37:43.540 stuff that we've done, and we try to do it regularly, ideally once a week. And the seal of that

00:37:49.680 confessional is inviolable. And then the FBI goes in there and tries to get the clergy to rat on the

00:37:57.320 parishioners. Can you imagine how perverse that is, how corrupt that is? Jordan goes on, he says,

00:38:06.840 we've repeatedly sought information from the FBI relating to this document that came out at the end of

00:38:11.580 January, entitled, Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist

00:38:17.960 Catholic Ideology. Almost certainly presents new mitigation opportunities. A classic gobbledygook 1.00

00:38:23.220 from the government. But it's saying that the Catholics are radicals, especially the conservative

00:38:30.960 Catholics. They're radicals, and the feds are going to go in and spy on them. Which proves that memo that 1.00

00:38:36.440 came out, that wasn't just a one-off memo. Oopsie-daisy. That's how the FBI tried to play it off.

00:38:40.480 They said, oh, whoopsies. Oh, that memo, that doesn't meet our standards. Oops. Don't know how

00:38:45.280 that got in there. Yeah, okay, it's gone. Yeah, it's gone. Nothing to see here. No, we didn't mean

00:38:49.980 that. Hey, is that a butterfly? Hey, come on, stop looking here. But no, this was a program.

00:38:54.880 This was a program carried out by the FBI with agents on the case spying on Catholics.

00:39:02.020 That is scary because it raises all sorts of questions about how our democracy really operates.

00:39:12.180 It raises all sorts of questions about the power of the deep state. And it especially shows you just

00:39:17.080 what utter garbage it is when you hear the libs whining and crying and clutching their pearls over 1.00

00:39:22.560 the threats. The threats to our sacred democracy posed by the horn hat man taking a selfie in the 1.00

00:39:29.260 Capitol. What about the threats to our sacred democracy from the FBI spying on Christians?

00:39:34.540 Going in and trying to flip priests on their parishioners. What about that? That seems like

00:39:40.340 a bigger threat to our sacred democracy than some Midwestern grannies having, taking pictures in the 1.00

00:39:46.660 Capitol. It's our democracy. And you know, do you know that the conservatives are not even defending

00:39:54.060 our sacred democracy? According to, it's according to MSNBC's Nicole Wallace. Nicole Wallace says not a

00:40:01.360 single Republican is doing anything to protect democracy. The Republican, the corruption of the

00:40:07.460 party that you and I were a part of is also a story that gets short shrifted. We sanitize that too.

00:40:13.700 It's corrupt from the top to the bottom, from east to west. Not one Republican condemned the

00:40:18.500 Tennessee Republican majority for what they did. Not one Republican who thought that bringing

00:40:24.260 democracy to Iraq or Afghanistan would make our country safer, which was, I know it's on 0.99

00:40:28.640 pipe in there, but that was the position of Mitch McConnell and every elected Republican. Not one of

00:40:32.560 them is interested in doing a single damn thing to protect democracy here in America, here in Tennessee.

00:40:38.220 Not one of them.

00:40:39.060 The Republicans who voted to expel the Democrat lawmakers who led what, and a protest that,

00:40:55.020 the sort of protest that the Democrats themselves have called an insurrection and a coup d'etat,

00:40:58.800 and these Democrat lawmakers in Tennessee led it. The thing that the Democrats say posed the greatest

00:41:07.020 threat to democracy and almost overthrew our whole constitutional order, these Democrat lawmakers 0.71

00:41:12.580 led one of those, a much more serious version of those, in the Tennessee State House. And then when

00:41:19.800 they were expelled, those same liberals come in and they say, this is a threat to democracy. It's always

00:41:24.780 a threat. When you don't give the liberals what they want, that's always going to be the threat to

00:41:29.560 democracy, even when it is an expression of democracy. When the Republicans in the State House

00:41:34.980 who are duly elected by their constituents, when they exercise their right to expel members for

00:41:40.960 certain extraordinary misbehavior that the members have engaged in, that is not the undermining of

00:41:45.900 democracy. It can't be by definition. That is by definition an expression of democracy.

00:41:52.320 But what the liberals mean by democracy is liberalism. So if the people go in and they elect a Trump or

00:41:59.120 they elect an Orban or they elect a Georgia Maloney or they elect any conservative ever, that is

00:42:03.540 always a threat to democracy, according to the liberals. Because they don't like democracy, they only

00:42:11.040 like liberalism. Now, what are we going to do about it? I love that those Republicans expelled those

00:42:15.180 miscreants. What are we going to do about it? Well, we've got an answer. The State Freedom Caucus

00:42:22.960 Network. My colleague Luke Rosiak here just reported on this at Daily Wire. The State Freedom Caucus

00:42:28.700 Network is just what it sounds like. It's the Freedom Caucus that you see in the House of Representatives,

00:42:32.360 but at the state level. It has taken root in 11 states, and the mission of the State Freedom Caucus

00:42:40.140 Network is to make sure that Republicans, when they have political power, use that political power in

00:42:46.520 the states. We have a lot of political power at the state level, and we don't really use it all that

00:42:53.880 will. And you see what happens. When a Republican governor and a Republican legislature wield political

00:43:00.980 power in the states, big change can happen, like we've seen in Florida under Ron DeSantis. It's the

00:43:05.980 reason that Ron DeSantis is being talked about as the number two presidential candidate right now on the

00:43:09.600 right. But what about the other states? States such as Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho,

00:43:15.760 Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Utah, they've got way more Republican control than Florida does.

00:43:24.000 90% of seats in Wyoming are held by Republicans. Ohio has more Republican control than Florida does.

00:43:32.360 So why aren't they leading? Why are we all looking to Florida? We should be looking to Florida on one

00:43:37.120 issue, and then Wyoming one-ups them on another issue, and then Ohio one-ups Wyoming on another issue.

00:43:42.660 Well, that's what the State Freedom Caucus Network is setting out to do. It's led by Andrew Roth,

00:43:49.300 who is a former executive at the Club for Growth, alongside Justin Wimet, I'm probably mispronouncing

00:43:55.040 that, which is the House Freedom Caucus' former executive director. Great news. Let's do it, baby.

00:44:00.580 This is something I've been calling for for a very long time. Wield that political power,

00:44:05.520 not just at the national glitzy issues, but down at the state level too, down at the local level too.

00:44:10.560 Got to wield it. You got to use it or lose it. Speaking of political power being wielded and

00:44:18.660 all these sorts of political fights, Alvin Bragg, who is the Manhattan district attorney who is trying

00:44:24.360 to imprison Donald Trump, he is now suing Jim Jordan, the head of the House Judiciary Committee,

00:44:30.400 because Jim Jordan is going to subpoena a prosecutor who formerly worked for Bragg because Jim Jordan

00:44:36.400 thinks that the prosecution by Bragg of Donald Trump is a violation of our constitutional norms

00:44:42.420 and something within the purview of the House Judiciary Committee, because the House Judiciary

00:44:47.000 Committee, though focused on the federal level, obviously has an interest in what happens to

00:44:51.860 presidents and former presidents. Are you confused by that? Yeah, I'm a little bit confused too.

00:44:55.540 But what it basically boils down to is that you've got a fight between the federal government

00:45:01.780 and the local government. And what's weird about this fight is that the federal government

00:45:06.380 is actually being represented by the conservatives and the local government in New York is being

00:45:10.820 represented by the liberals. And in this case, Jim Jordan is in the right. We're in uncharted

00:45:16.580 territory, so you're going to hear people making all sorts of legal arguments. All of those arguments

00:45:21.220 are going to be novel legal arguments because we've never been in a position before where a former

00:45:25.120 president and current leader of the opposition is being arrested by the ruling party

00:45:29.560 because we've degraded our country. And now we're living in something closer to a banana republic. 0.59

00:45:36.320 And it's going to be the Republicans on the side of the feds here, on the side of federal power,

00:45:40.980 because the guy that they've gone after is a former president. But Jordan is right here.

00:45:46.840 This is a huge overreach by the liberals and by New York. And I hope, I am so glad that we've

00:45:53.040 got Jim Jordan in the fight. He is the man for the hour. Keep it up, guys. Okay, the rest of the

00:45:59.120 show continues now. We've got a really important video for Woke Wednesday. This is the Love Don't

00:46:05.640 Judge, the latest Love Don't Judge video in which my producer Ben Davies wants to see how long I can

00:46:11.680 not judge and how long you can not judge whatever is in this video. Become a member. Use code

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The Michael Knowles Show - April 12, 2023

Ep. 1223 - Trans Triple Harvard Grad Runs Scared From Our Debate

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